Radiant Grotto 5x7
Hello and welcome to Tonalist painting by M Francis McCarthy.
Today's painting is 'Radiant Grotto' 5x7.
Our video features the progression of this painting from its initial drawing stages on up through the final brushstrokes and finishing touches, also featured is my usual rambling narration, so please check that out.
On today's video I was talking about failure. For better or worse, failure is a part of every artists working life. If you're going to be a competent artist you need to have a strategy for dealing with it.
My favorite strategy is to just keep painting. I will either destroy or put aside paintings that were less than successful. There is always a sense of disbelief on my part as I am left wondering what went wrong and why it happened to me. This is something that as artists, I believe we all experience and that would include even the great giant of landscape painting George Inness. There are quite a lot of mediocre to outright bad George Inness paintings out there, so we can take comfort that even someone as prolific and superb as he was, struggled and failed as we do.
What's funny, is there are times that I can tell that the painting is not going to work out long before I've even started the piece. There is a voice in my head saying "this isn't going to work out", as I (usually) choose to ignore it and proceed anyway. Other times I'm not hearing a voice, but if things are not going well at the initial stages (when doing the underpainting), I still feel that I can persevere and overcome.
The ability to persevere is a personality trait that is a bit of a double edge sword. On one hand there have been times that I have been able to pull a failing painting out of the fire and actually produce a nice work. Far more often though I am unable to save it, I just have to keep working on the painting, trying to save it as I am crashing and burning.
Out of any given series of paintings that I do, there are always going to be one or two that are excellent, three or four that are pretty good, some that are okay and one or two that are failures. It may seem that (failure) is a bit of a harsh term, but I believe in calling them as I see them.
It's always painful and unpleasant to deal with this aspect of working as an artist but again, there is one excellent strategy that is very helpful in dealing with this issue. That strategy is to produce a lot of work. If you produce a lot of work, you have more good paintings and the lemons can just be painted over, destroyed or perhaps saved for one day when they can be addressed again.
The logic behind this is pretty clear, if you are only doing a few paintings every year and 25% of them are failures that could mean out of four paintings you did in a year that one of them was bad and you only have one or two excellent works and one mediocre and one failure to speak for that time. If you worked harder and were more prolific, you have more good work to show (and sell) and you can let the lesser pieces take care themselves.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'Radiant Grotto' 5x7; this painting depicts a scene that is up in the hills near my home in Northland, New Zealand. The woods here are primeval and I have taken more than one crack at painting them. I do find the excess of detail in the bush to be a challenge and something that I'm coming to grips with every time I go after a motif of this type. I am very happy with 'Radiant Grotto' the 5x7, but as I discussed in the video the large painting did not work out and I have shelved it for another day.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
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| Radiant Grotto by M Francis McCarthy, 5x7 Oil Painting on Wood Panel |
Our video features the progression of this painting from its initial drawing stages on up through the final brushstrokes and finishing touches, also featured is my usual rambling narration, so please check that out.
On today's video I was talking about failure. For better or worse, failure is a part of every artists working life. If you're going to be a competent artist you need to have a strategy for dealing with it.
My favorite strategy is to just keep painting. I will either destroy or put aside paintings that were less than successful. There is always a sense of disbelief on my part as I am left wondering what went wrong and why it happened to me. This is something that as artists, I believe we all experience and that would include even the great giant of landscape painting George Inness. There are quite a lot of mediocre to outright bad George Inness paintings out there, so we can take comfort that even someone as prolific and superb as he was, struggled and failed as we do.
What's funny, is there are times that I can tell that the painting is not going to work out long before I've even started the piece. There is a voice in my head saying "this isn't going to work out", as I (usually) choose to ignore it and proceed anyway. Other times I'm not hearing a voice, but if things are not going well at the initial stages (when doing the underpainting), I still feel that I can persevere and overcome.
The ability to persevere is a personality trait that is a bit of a double edge sword. On one hand there have been times that I have been able to pull a failing painting out of the fire and actually produce a nice work. Far more often though I am unable to save it, I just have to keep working on the painting, trying to save it as I am crashing and burning.
Out of any given series of paintings that I do, there are always going to be one or two that are excellent, three or four that are pretty good, some that are okay and one or two that are failures. It may seem that (failure) is a bit of a harsh term, but I believe in calling them as I see them.
It's always painful and unpleasant to deal with this aspect of working as an artist but again, there is one excellent strategy that is very helpful in dealing with this issue. That strategy is to produce a lot of work. If you produce a lot of work, you have more good paintings and the lemons can just be painted over, destroyed or perhaps saved for one day when they can be addressed again.
The logic behind this is pretty clear, if you are only doing a few paintings every year and 25% of them are failures that could mean out of four paintings you did in a year that one of them was bad and you only have one or two excellent works and one mediocre and one failure to speak for that time. If you worked harder and were more prolific, you have more good work to show (and sell) and you can let the lesser pieces take care themselves.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'Radiant Grotto' 5x7; this painting depicts a scene that is up in the hills near my home in Northland, New Zealand. The woods here are primeval and I have taken more than one crack at painting them. I do find the excess of detail in the bush to be a challenge and something that I'm coming to grips with every time I go after a motif of this type. I am very happy with 'Radiant Grotto' the 5x7, but as I discussed in the video the large painting did not work out and I have shelved it for another day.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Radiant Grotto 5x7 (Detail) |